Geneva — The US ambassador to the UN in Geneva said on Tuesday it was "a travesty" that Syria would head the Conference on Disarmament, leaving briefly when the Syrian representative took the floor. "Syria’s presence here is a travesty. This regime has committed countless crimes against its own people through the use of chemical weapons, and it is just unacceptable for them to be leading this body," Robert Wood told AFP just before the session began. "They don’t have the moral authority or the credibility to preside over this body, and we are going to make very clear during their four-week presidency that we find it abhorrent."
Syria took over the rotating presidency of Conference on Disarmament (CD) on Monday, according to a decades-old practice among the body’s 65 members of following the alphabetical order of countries’ names in English. During the first open session of Syria’s presidency on Tuesday, the US led a number of diplomats in protest. Wood briefly left the room wh...
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